A huge obstacle in my cooking is what to do with the spare parts. When making meringues, we need egg whites. What the heck am I going to do with the egg yolks? The simplest solution is to use the whole eggs in the meringue. I wondered why we had never made whole egg meringues. I separated my eggs and adapted a sous vide meringue recipe that I picked up from Eric at Charcoal BYOB. I put the whites, sugar, salt, and citric acid in a mason jar. It was on me to figure out the egg yolks. I mixed them with sugar and lemon oil in a separate mason jar. I cooked both jars in a pot set at 150°F/65.5°C for 1.5 hours.
I removed the jars from the pot and poured the egg white mixture into a stand mixer. I needed to use a rubber spatula to scrape the sugar that settled in the bottom of the jar into the mixing bowl. I whipped the mixture for about 7 minutes, until semi-firm peaks formed. Then I transferred the whipped meringue to a clean mixing bowl. At this point, I could have stopped and been thrilled with the delicious results. Instead, I pushed forward.
I scraped the egg yolk mixture into the dirty mixing bowl from the stand mixer. Again, I needed to scrape the settled sugar from the jar into the bowl. I whipped the yolk mixture for about 5 minutes until they formed thick ribbons. I jockeyed the bowl around the whisk attachment to help the whipping of the sugary yolk mixture. When the yolks were pale yellow and thick, I poured them into the whipped egg whites and stirred them together.
The result is a decadent, creamy, sticky, whole-egg, lemon-flavored meringue. It’s true lemon meringue. It has a round flavor and richness on the palate that simply melts away on your tongue. It toasts up beautifully. In my next version, I will work on pushing the whipping even further to see how high and tight I can make the finished meringue. We can change up the flavors and see how it works as a cookie or as a pie topping, turn it into frosting or fold it into an angel food batter, make pavlovas, or Baked Alaskas. The possibilities are endless.
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